New York City is Owed $500 Million in Parking Fines. No One is Paying Up (theguardian.com) 177
The company behind the bright green marijuana-themed trucks that crowd Manhattan's tourist districts is now paying the price for repeatedly breaking the law. They haven't been fined for selling anything illicit, but for being top contributors to one of the city's other infamous scourges: illegal parking. From a report: The New York City department of finance confirmed to the Guardian that Weed World Candies had paid $200,000 in parking fines to get back several vehicles that had been towed in June by the city's sheriff's office.
But while Weed World is apparently getting on the right side of the law, its payments only equal a fraction of the $534.5m the city is owed in unpaid parking fines, according to the agency, as serial offenders skirt the rules in one of the world's most maddening places to get around. In Midtown Manhattan, where competition for parking is cutthroat in a grid of cramped and chaotic roadways, trucks habitually stop in bike lanes, forcing cyclists into busy traffic; cars double-park as drivers sprint into bodegas to buy their increasingly expensive bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches. Police often turn a blind eye, amid allegations that they illegally park their personal cars and harassed a cyclist who reported them.
But while Weed World is apparently getting on the right side of the law, its payments only equal a fraction of the $534.5m the city is owed in unpaid parking fines, according to the agency, as serial offenders skirt the rules in one of the world's most maddening places to get around. In Midtown Manhattan, where competition for parking is cutthroat in a grid of cramped and chaotic roadways, trucks habitually stop in bike lanes, forcing cyclists into busy traffic; cars double-park as drivers sprint into bodegas to buy their increasingly expensive bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches. Police often turn a blind eye, amid allegations that they illegally park their personal cars and harassed a cyclist who reported them.
Boots for everyone! (Score:2)
The real problem (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't about the rich or companies or bad people double parking or lack of public transit or whatever.
For NYC in particular and I assume many other older cities, the problem is they grew over -very- long periods of time and the streets were laid down in a time of horses or later very small and many fewer vehicles than today and there were millions less people in each city.
There's no real fix to parking/driving in a place like NYC. Nothing realistic. You'd have to flatten major pieces of city and rebuild them for modern life.
The only other option, which would cause riots and politicians to immediately lose their jobs, is to bar non-commercial vehicles from major parts of the city and dramatically boost public transit.
The odds of that happening in this universe is roughly zero.
I predict status quo. More tickets. Commercial places will jack prices to cover ticket costs as just part of the cost of doing business, everyone will pay higher prices, the poor and middle class will take it on the chin as always and life will continue as before.
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The solution is to reduce density and spread out.
Work from home if you can, and move out of the city. Better quality of life.
If you can't work from home, live within walking distance of your workplace.
If your staff can't live within walking distance then either pay them more so that they can, or relocate your business somewhere that has good availability of affordable housing nearby.
The problem with cities is high density commercial premises clustered together with little/no residential premises nearby, for
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If you can't work from home, live within walking distance of your workplace.
That is how the city traditionally operated. Subways extended that range.
Then politicians drove out a lot of the blue collar work. Factories and such used to be common in the city.
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Always one option - we can forgive the debt they owe for parking violations. Say, on the order of $10K to $50K per person....
That ought to fix the problem forever, because noone will dare to risk illegally parking if they will be punished by, effectively, handing them a big wad of money....
Re: The real problem (Score:2)
Pre-paid parking tickets? Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
If the city is offering the option to pre-pay on "illegal" parking fines then is it illegal any more? That's just paying for a parking spot now.
A large chunk of the fines is from diplomats visiting the United Nations complex. Their diplomatic status means there's little the city can do to collect the fines. They can ask nicely but there's no collecting the money if the diplomat doesn't want to pay. I say kick the United Nations out. Let them find some other place to bitch and moan about what the Americ
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>A large chunk of the fines is from diplomats visiting the United Nations complex. Their diplomatic status means there's little the city can do to collect the fines. They can ask nicely but there's no collecting the money if the diplomat doesn't want to pay. I say kick the United Nations out.
Your diplomats do the same in other countries. It's a tit for tat game and an employment perk. Move on. :)
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Russia and China would love that. The UN gives us a lot of power and influence and I imagine we gather a lot of intelligence from the foreign diplomats that visit the UN,
Your problem is that we don't control the UN because we kind of had to make some compromises to set the whole thing up, otherwise nobody else would have wanted to play along. There are some people questioning whether the US, UK, France, Russia and Germany should be permanent members of the Security Council and if we should have veto power
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Too crowded..... (Score:2)
The last time I visited NYC was the last time I decided I'd ever go there.
I guess some people are just gluttons for punishment and love fighting all the traffic and overcrowding as some sort of challenge? It seems obvious to me that if there are so many people packed in the city so trucks are having to stop in bike lanes and block bicycles, and people with vending trucks are racking up so many parking fines they're getting their vehicles confiscated? The root problem isn't with law enforcement and ticketing
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I guess some people are just gluttons for punishment....
Or how about some people have different tastes than you? Clearly millions choose to live there, many of them with the wealth to live almost anywhere else if they wanted.
Personally I find the tropics are a pretty mediocre place to vacation in but you wont find me telling the millions who consider such places "paradise" that they're gluttons for punishment or any nonsense like that. My own tastes are just different than theirs.
And yes, I have and likely will in the future choose to vacation in a place like NY
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The inmates are the guards.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
Impound and sell the vehicles. (Score:2)
I'm no genius but isn't the logical solution to get restitution by impounding the vehicles of serial offenders and sell them at auction? If you have already impounded the vehicles then selling them at auction is a no-brainer.
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Just buy a dirt cheap old clunker, the cost of replacing the car is less than the cost of the fine.
Impounding a car actually costs money, and since the owner won't want it back they will never pay the fine which means the city becomes responsible for storing and subsequently disposing of the vehicle.
I had a friend who had such a car, he got clamped once or twice but never towed. Generally once they realised he was never going to pay, they took the clamp off and moved the car out of the way.
This is correct (Score:2)
Except its not (Score:2)
I once lived in a bustling downtown area that charged for parking at every opportunity. The residents themselves were who garnered the most parking tickets - you know, the people who were already taxed to pay for the roads, the meters, the enforcement, etc. Total fucking scam.
ancient parallel to New York had its problems too (Score:2)
Their fee fees hurt (Score:2)
Because they are not getting one of their biggest revenue sources.
Re:ticketing (Score:4, Interesting)
The word frivolous implies the tickets are wrong rather than the people not paying them.
I guess laws should be abolished when people ignore them?
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I guess laws should be abolished when people ignore them?
I imagine someone on Florida would be very happy with that idea about now ... okay, many people in Florida -- it's Florida. :-)
Re: ticketing (Score:2)
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Everyone driving in from New Jersey can just ignore it then.
Re:ticketing (Score:5, Informative)
I live in the land of plenty of parking spaces, And even here the number of lazy self-important people that have zero respect for anyone else and park in handicapped spots, non-spots, the middle of the road, almost in the middle of the road or anywhere else so they can walk 100ft less or save 30 seconds of their valuable time, confirms that the similar laws are needed everywhere. It is clear some percentage of our population believes they are all that matters and have no respect for anyone else unless someone is making them pay for being an asshole.
Now we can get rid of the parking fines, so long as we just do proper anarchy and replace them with the "tire-slashing/keying/window breaking" allowed parking zones.
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What's really needed is more parking, more affordable parking, and less cramming of things together without thought for the logistics.
Lack of parking is one of the main reasons why smaller shops have been on the decline for years, while shopping malls with abundant parking have taken over a lot of trade.
Parking enforcement has also become a corrupt cash cow rather than a way to enforce the rules. Their performance is based on the number of tickets issued, which encourages the issuing of more tickets rather
Re:ticketing (Score:5, Insightful)
How about not needing a car in the 1st place?
Suburbs are made for cars. There are no stores there so you have to drive somewhere else and store your car there. And that is the reason malls have lots of parking. Also, most malls do not have housing nearby, so to get to the mall you need a car...
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A lot of suburbs were made for cars, but we've also become lazy and dependent on cars. I used to ride my bike to the mall. 3.5 miles each way. I thought nothing of it. I stopped riding my bike at age 15 when I got a driver's license.
In college I didn't have a car, but living within walking distance of a grocery store and school was nice. 2 miles each way was the longest walk to school I had - only uphill one way though. Not bad exercise.
Now I have a Target and a Costco and a Walmart all about 2 miles awa
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You're suggesting that cities should force businesses to have more parking, for their own good. What else should cities force businesses to do for their own good? Where does this line of thinking end?
Big-box stores love minimum parking requirements because they serve as a barrier to entry, preventing competition with smaller stores.
Big-box stores and shopping malls are a VERY unproductive use of land. They use a lot of infrastructure and bring very little tax revenue [archive.org]. Cities love density because it subsidiz [streetsblog.org]
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What's really needed is more parking, more affordable parking, and less cramming of things together without thought for the logistics.
Yes, that is absolutely true. Unfortunately, you can't un-build New York City.
Cramming 10 million people into a few square miles was a really, really bad idea. But now we're stuck with it, and the only thing we can do is try to use financial penalties to convince people to stop being selfish assholes.
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Or ban private car ownership by a specific future date. A lot of beach cities could really go this route and it would be nice.
Re: ticketing (Score:2)
That would be stupid because then people would be really limited in where they can go that isn't covered by mass transit, like say national parks.
Ideally have metered parking where there are too many cars in general, and make the price for anything beyond a 15 minute stay really expensive.
Yes We Can (Score:2)
Yes We Can. Just get into a shooting war with Russia.
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More parking? Wha? And encourage using a car? Pretty sure most major blue cities want you to stop driving and use public transportation and a bicycle. If we had REAL infrastructure for bicycles this would be awesome.
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No, what's needed is city design that stops the need for parking spaces, and then to make the parking spaces really expensive to inceitivise not using them. Bonus points for reducing traffic without the absurd idea of adding yet another lane to that already massive highway.
Lack of parking is one of the main reasons why smaller shops have been on the decline for years
Small shops thrive over big ones in well designed cities. I shop almost exclusively at them. After all why would I put myself through driving to a big store when I can just walk or cycle to a local small one. A well designed city has lots
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Now we can get rid of the parking fines, so long as we just do proper anarchy and replace them with the "tire-slashing/keying/window breaking" allowed parking zones.
Pretty sure there already is a place like that. It's called San Francisco.
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The number of lazy self-important people that have zero respect for anyone else and park in handicapped spots, non-spots, the middle of the road, almost in the middle of the road or anywhere else ... just so they can walk 100ft less or save 30 seconds of their valuable time, confirms that the similar laws are needed everywhere.
It is clear some percentage of our population believes they are all that matters and have no respect for anyone else unless someone is making them pay for being an asshole.
QFT.
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Laws that cannot be enforced and run contrary to the common understanding of "justice" are actually harmful for a society, since people tend to follow the idea of "if one thing is bad, maybe the next one is too".
It's kinda a reverse con job. A con job relies on the con man gaining the trust of a person by saying or doing something they agree with until they gained the confidence of that person by showing they are trustworthy, then betraying them. In this case, an unjust law shows the people that this law is
Re:ticketing (Score:5, Insightful)
If a large portion of the population 'ignores' a law the 'democratic' thing to do is actually to probably repeal it. Obviously that means most people don't agree it should be a rule.
In this particular case, it's not a "large portion of population". If a large portion of the daytime driving population of New York City was ignoring parking regulations, the unpaid tickets would come to much more than $500,000. The people who are ignoring the law are just representative of the sort of people who think the rules shouldn't apply to them, plus a smattering of the ones that just can't afford to pay the fines. If you want to see an example of a large portion of the population ignoring a law, just get on any non-congested freeway in California.
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As others have mentioned, NY state needs to pass a law that won't allow you to register your car without paying your parking tickets, or at the very least setup a payment plan.
I mean, you really think New York cannot figure out how to get money out of people. Come on. Probably a lot of rich people that don't want to have to pay them and just tell their politicians, hey, yeah, no.
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California law on speeding says you cant be ticketed if you are driving flow of traffic. So if you are going 80 in a 60 zone you cant be ticketed if you are following a guy going 80. Anytime a cop stops you and asks you do you know how fast you were going never admit a number, just say I was following the guy in front.
Nope. [getdismissed.com]
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The reality is most of society obeys most of the laws most of the time.
Only when the fear of punishment is strong enough.
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Well... considering that laws are supposed to serve the people...
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Well... considering that laws are supposed to serve the people...
And they do. The fact that self entitled arseholes exist is not an excuse to remove the law. Some guy parks in a handicapped spot and gets a ticket doesn't mean the law doesn't serve the people.
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The critical question is whether a few, some or the majority of people break a law. It's usually a pretty good indicator whether a society actually supports a law or whether it doesn't.
Laws not supported by a society are actually a potential threat to social peace, because if people get used to breaking laws and not being considered criminals by their peers, their support for laws in general wanes. Enforcement of laws always relies on society supporting those laws and ostracizing those that break them, or o
Re: ticketing (Score:2)
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No, if murder rates are high, wonder why people don't care about murder and don't consider it wrong.
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I guess laws should be abolished when people ignore them?
That's what they did with prohibition.
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Not quite. Prohibition had massive larger societal consequences, increased crime and quite critically: the law didn't serve the people in the first place, they merely imposed rural religious "morals" on the non-religious non rural people. The people who ultimately broke the law were the general populace, not just a bunch of self entitled assholes who think their hazard lights give them the right to block whomever they want.
That last part is key. $500m in parking fines is nothing. A minority of arseholes can
Re: ticketing (Score:2)
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I'd argue that there are plenty of laws that have no legitimate purpose or merit, i.e., frivolous. You can find a few here.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/... [foxnews.com]
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Except some city-states (Singapore, Hong Kong, most notably, but even then, they have suburbs as well) you can live in the country or a small town in any country.
Re:ticketing (Score:5, Informative)
Paying your parking ticket is like the simplest way to prove you are a honest citizen.
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Actually if you have enough money, you just pay the fines and don't care. They are not a deterrent, they are simply the cost of parking wherever is most convenient for you.
Re: ticketing (Score:2)
I like Finland's approach of speeding fines being a percentage of income. If a fine is intended to be a deterrent, as opposed to covering damage done, it makes sense to base it on income. Fir driving, penalty points can also be used.
Prior to the introduction of penalty points in my country, you could pretty much speed or run red lights so long as you had the money for the fines, and if you didn't hit anybody.
Re: ticketing (Score:2)
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How well does that work for people who inherited money, won the lottery, or otherwise have money that's not income?
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I read that in Snake Plissken's voice:
Bob Hauk : You go in, find the President, bring him out in 24 hours, and you're a free man.
Snake Plissken : 24 hours, huh?
Bob Hauk : I'm making you an offer.
Snake Plissken : Bullshit!
Bob Hauk : Straight just like I said.
Snake Plissken : I'll think about it.
Bob Hauk : No time. Give me an answer.
Snake Plissken : Get a new president!
Re: ticketing (Score:2)
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Or they could stop frivolous ticketing.
Or just make cars illegal there, like the rest of the country assumes they are after reading this nonsense.
Re:ticketing (Score:4, Interesting)
This. I often wondered why they don't make prohibit private cars in Manhattan. Only taxis, limos, buses, and profession vehicles like delivery trucks, garbage trucks, etc. No private vehicles at all. Yes, that means no Uber or Lyft except for dropping people off in Manhattan -- no pickups.
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Yes, that means no Uber or Lyft except for dropping people off in Manhattan -- no pickups.
So, your "modern" business model only offers one-way trips...to an island?
Meh, what the hell...Survivor: NYC sounds like a shitty enough sequel to be profitable with today's audience.
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Yes, that means no Uber or Lyft except for dropping people off in Manhattan -- no pickups.
One way transport... that only works if you're taking people to prison.
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The tickets aren't frivolous, but they are based on a premise that there's a workable parking system in place. They don't have the resources to provide even half the needed parking and even if all the fines were paid it wouldn't solve the problem.
Re: ticketing (Score:2)
It's a New York thing.
The parking tickets are just a cost of living thing. There are so many other costs on top of the taxes that if they were in the taxes it would surpass the European tax pressure.
Re:I'm with YouTuber Adam Something (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need a car in NYC, and if you're able-bodied, can get around the entire city without one, pretty much. Those with disabilities may need vehicles to get around but it's not a large percentage of the city population.
However, all cities need trucks to deliver our stuff, and those trucks need places to park while making the deliveries. The laws should be adjusted so trucks have an easier time parking to load and unload, while at the same time making it more difficult for passenger cars so fewer people try to drive them into the city.
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In other parts of the world, cities are upgrading & extending their public transport infrastructure as fast as they can just to keep up with growth & demand.
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Way to turn "I can't really afford to move" into a moral failing.
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Extremely few people can not afford to move. It doesn't cost much to rent a truck, or just throw all your shit in the back of a van. Poor people have migrated for eons.
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Exactly who is holding a gun to their heads forcing them to live in an ultra-dense urban city?
Usually their boss. The CEO who gets a slip in a publicly funded yacht basin downtown. Or invited into investment schemes to provide dining and entertainment businesses in cities. The same guy who is screaming that his employees won't come back to the office after the Covid lockdown and dump their paychecks into the company store again.
Suburbs are a ponzi scheme (Score:2, Troll)
The suburbs are a gross ponzi scheme, because of the cost of replacing aged infrastructure vs the taxable base.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Why not explore other options, working very well elsewhere in the world? For quality of life and environmental reasons, without undo influence by The Koch Brothers [nytimes.com]?
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Seriously look at the videos in your links and take a few seconds to think. It just makes quick off the hip statements and comes to the conclusion. As an example. In the first video it brings up a developer who pays for the new infrastructure and then hands this infrastructure over to the city. Yes, that is true but it also hands over the tax revenue. If there are no services there are no taxes. The taxes that the city collects are considerable more than the 25 year amortization of the infrastructure. Not t
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Who told you that?
Take two developments in Nashville [streetsblog.org]. The mixed-use one brings $3,370 in tax revenue annually while costing $1,400 per year in infrastructure maintenance, policing, fire response, and other general fund obligations.
The traditional, large-lot residential development brings $1,620 in tax revenue while costing the city $1,600. So it barely breaks even.
And then when it comes time to replac
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My reply was showing that cities and suburbs are not ponzi schemes and that his links didn't fit his claims and you do the same?
The traditional, large-lot residential development brings $1,620 in tax revenue while costing the city $1,600. So it barely breaks even.
I am not sure in what part of the world you live in and how GAP rules apply but in my part of the world accounting takes into consideration the replacement value of an asset due to wear and tear. In my comment above I mention that facts are hidden from us. Since you and the article you referenced did not elaborate on what the costs were I am going to assume that replacement cost ar
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Those videos are such a vast oversimplification of a complex topic. It assumes that local governments will receive zero federal and state dollars for future infrastructure improvements- which is, of course, not true. It also completely ignores the fact that those suburban houses are also paying state and federal taxes- so you can't just wave a magic wand and pretend those taxes don't exist. Finally, the biggest sin the author makes is he fails to amortize the cost of infrastructure over the lifetime of the
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We all agree then. Federal and state subsidies are necessary to make car-dependent communities financially viable.
No, both videos mention tax revenue. The problem is when the tax revenue is not sufficient to fund both the maintenance costs and the replacement costs of infrastructure.
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I have everything you just described along with a bus, metro, train, supermarkets, hardware store, schools and sports facilities all within walking distance of where I live.
Your desire to live in a house does not excuse poor town planning.
On the flip side there are many people who can't be happier leaving their large houses behind for an easier to manage apartment. That said I do wonder when they turn into you how they vent their anger at society when they can't shout at kids on their lawn.
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You don't need a car in NYC, and if you're able-bodied, can get around the entire city without one, pretty much....The laws should be adjusted so trucks have an easier time parking to load and unload, while at the same time making it more difficult for passenger cars so fewer people try to drive them into the city.
When your answer includes the words "pretty much", that "more difficult" suggestion becomes "shitty impossible" for those "fewer people", which could mean 100,000 affected at the end of the day.
When we're talking about a city with 9 million inhabitants, any percentage affected isn't exactly a dismissive amount. I see the point of your suggestion, but the problem is New York City, where everyone is a priority. NOW.
Re:I'm with YouTuber Adam Something (Score:4, Informative)
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That may be so, and in a perfect world, they would be. Alas, we don't live in a perfect world and have to deal with cities the way they are. I don't know where you live, but I spent most of my life in LA and I can assure you that you need a car to get around there. The transit system is set up as a spoke and wheel so that workers who live out in the suburbs where they can afford housing, but not cars can get to their lo
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When you're looking for a place to live, choose one near a transit station on the same line as your workplace, even if it doesn't come with free parking. Better yet, find a place to live near a station that serves two transit lines, because it will give you more options when you're looking for a place to work.
And so when you're looking for a place to work, choose one near a transit station on the same line as your home, even if you have to take a slight pay cut. Remember, owning a car costs 62.5 cents per m [irs.gov]
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You're assuming that your city's transit system was laid out rationally, with convenience for the users a major consideration. That didn't happen in LA, and at this point, the MTA isn't interested in rationalizing anything.
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From the news it doesn't sound like its all that safe to be on public transport, particularly the sub way system there. Rapes, assaults, often in front of people that just sit there filming it on phones rather than jumping in to help.
No thanks.
Re: I'm with YouTuber Adam Something (Score:2)
Re:I'm with YouTuber Adam Something (Score:4, Insightful)
Stats show overwhelmingly, that people that take the time to get their carry conceal license, are NOT the ones you have to worry about.
It is the criminals that are carrying stolen guns that are the problem.
Criminals are going to criminal you know.
Re:I'm with YouTuber Not Just Bikes (Score:2)
Stroads. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Not Just Bikes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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A YouTube channel exists just for people like you, called NotJustBikes [youtube.com]. Check it out. It is super informative and extremely well produced, showing everyone living with The Dark Side how The Other Side lives very well.
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OK. [ytimg.com]
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yea we don't need cops if we have citizens acting as self-appointed judges.
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Exactly. That’s how all of these idiots that run things got there in the first place.
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Why not make the parking free for everyone ;
Just put a small tax on these cannabis sales and offer free parking in a 1KM radius.
Stop trying to be a victim in a system that is flawed. Change the System.
They already have a 13% tax on Cannabis. https://www.tax.ny.gov/bus/auc... [ny.gov]